#deception

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human. ↗

— Desiderius Erasmus

#deception #folly #hear #human #i

Everything about the left is perception, manipulation, and lies. Everything. Everything is 'Wag the Dog.' Everything is a structured deception. ↗

— Rush Limbaugh

#deception #dog #everything #left #lies

For as long as I care to remember, religion, like the striptease, has always been a display of the power of suggestion. Like the Virgin Birth, it has all too often supported an immaculate deception. ↗

— Bernard Katz

#been #birth #care #deception #display

Any seeming deception in a statement is costly, not only in the expense of the advertising but in the detrimental effect produced upon the customer, who believes she has been misled. ↗

— John Wanamaker

#any #been #believes #costly #customer

[R]aging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase "the good old days" has passed from cliché to self-parody. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#cliches #crime #exclusion #immigration #morals

Who would appreciate such candor? No one. None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception –but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they have a purpose greater than just passing along their genes to the next generation. Individuals seem to need similar delusions – about who they are and why they do what they do. They need heroes, however fraudulent… Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt. What’s more, deception works best, according to studies by psychologists, when the person doing the deceiving is fool enough to be deceived, too; that is, when he believes his own lies. That is why incompetent leaders – who are naïve enough to fall for their own guff – are such a danger to civilized life. If they are modern leaders, they must also delude themselves into thinking they know how to make the world a better place. Invariably, the answers they propose to problems are ones that bubble up from their own vanity, the essence of which is to make the rest of the world look just like them! ↗

— William Bonner

#honesty #truth #art

I already hated that gray suit and then having to go through putting on that wig with a false front - again made me feel so trapped inside this person who was desperately wanting to break out of it but she was so caught up in the web of deception that she couldn't. ↗

— Kim Novak

#already #break #caught #deception #desperately

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge. ↗

— Todd Solondz

#jump #just #many #mechanisms #might

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It’s no matter that this dye doesn’t fool you. My lady, you don’t dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little. ↗

— Luigi Pirandello

#age

The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#deception #los-angeles #make-believe #smog #southern-california